Key Dental KPIs For Tracking Sales and Patient Attrition

“What gets measured gets done” — if you want to generate more profits for your dental practice, you need to identify the right key performance indicators (KPIs) and track them consistently, so you can make targeted improvements. 

Tracking your numbers helps you understand your marketing ROI and invest your money in promotional channels that are yielding the best results. You can improve your ad campaigns and identify content that performs well to promote or repurpose them.

Your metrics also give you insights into your patients’ preferences and behaviors. This can inform effective segmentation and personalization strategies to increase the effectiveness of your marketing message. You can also use the data to inform how you can improve your website experience so more visitors will turn into leads or patients.

Moreover, you can find out where you’re losing patients. Given that the average patient attrition rate for dental practices is 40%, improving this number can have a significant impact on your bottom line.

Now the million-dollar question is, “what numbers should I track and how do I track them?”

Key Metrics To Track in Your Dental Practice

You need to quantify patient acquisition/sales and patient attrition by associating them with metrics that you can track. Here are the critical KPIs you should know:

Patient Acquisition KPIs for Dental Practices

• Conversion rates for lead-to-schedule, scheduled-to-attend, and attended-to-purchase: These can help you identify “leaks” along your sales process so you can make targeted improvements.
• Cost per acquisition: The amount you spend to get one new patient. When you compare this metric to your marketing spend, you can determine your ROI. 
• Conversion rates: The percentage of leads who become patients. If this rate is low, remove barriers to booking appointments (e.g., by using an online booking tool.)
• Patient lifetime value: The total amount of money a patient spends with you. A high lifetime value means you’re getting high-quality leads, so focus on those patient acquisition channels.

Patient Attrition KPIs for Dental Practices

• Patient churn rate: The rate at which patients stop coming to your practice. A high churn rate means you should invest more effort into building patient relationships and getting them to return (e.g., by sending automated recare reminders.)
• Repeat purchase ratio: The percentage of patients that have returned to your practice and is a good indicator of patient loyalty — the flip side of patient attrition.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): This score is determined by asking your patients one question: "How likely are you to recommend our practice to your friends and family?" A high NPS is a good reflection of patient satisfaction and loyalty.
• Patient satisfaction: You can gauge patient sentiment by using surveys and monitoring online reviews. The happier your patients are, the more likely they’ll return to your practice.

Set Goals To Lower Patient Attrition

The first step to lower patient attrition is to set measurable goals by identifying KPIs along the entire patient life cycle, so you know exactly where churn occurs. 

To support these goals, you need to put the mechanisms in place to track your metrics. You should implement the right program (e.g., a qualifying process) supported by robust dental practice management software. For example, tab32 can help you track conversion as soon as a patient comes into your system. 

You can create automated workflows and record each patient’s interactions with your practice on their patient profile. You can also track which acquisition channels attract patients with the highest retention rate and lifetime value so you can invest in marketing strategies with the highest ROI.

After you have identified the KPIs and set goals to lower your attrition rates, you’ll need to support your strategy with actionable insights. For example, use dental practice management software with an analytics module to track the numbers and generate real-time insights so you can make accurate business decisions.

Conclusion

Navigating metrics and analytics can be intimidating. On top of that, if you have to extract the numbers from various sources and then wrangle with spreadsheets, you’ll not only be spending a lot of time on running reports but you may also miss out on opportunities to reduce attrition and drive revenues.

tab32 offers a built-in analytics module that takes the data right from your patient records so you can gain valuable insight to run your practice with just a few clicks of the mouse. Learn more about our tracking capabilities and request a demo to see it in action.